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hmmm, is LAN internet faster than WAN or is it placebo?

Berryracer

Berryracer

Platinum Member
I have always been connected via my wireless to my internet which is a fibre optic 8 MBPS down / 1 MBPS up connection (I know it's slow but prices in Dubai for internet are very expensive)

Anyway, today I turned off the wireless and for the first time connected my laptop to my same wireless router (E4200) but VIA the CAT5E cable.

When I am surfing now, it seems like when I go to a website it loads instantly without that brief 1 second delay I had when I was connected to Wireless.

it might be true or I am just experiencing the placebo effect

what do you guys think?
 
An 8 Mbps Internet connection is perfect for surfing the web.
You only need more if you do large file transfers, want to watch TV (or video-on-demand) over the net, etc.

Wireless technology has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of course is that you don't need to mess with cables. That's obvious. But the disadvantage is that there are no guarantees to how well it works. WiFi is prone to bad connectivity. (Packet loss, extra retransmissions, high latency, low bandwidth, everything bad you can think of).

Reasons ?
1) You share one medium with everyone else that is close to you. If you have lots of neighbors who also use WiFi, you will have to share the bandwidth. If one of your neighbors is a heavy user (lots of file downloads), there will be less bandwidth left for you.
2) Interference. Some machines or appliances transmit electrical noise. That interfere with the WiFi signal.
3) Signal gets worse when it has to travel through walls. Signal gets worse over distance. These factors cause WiFi to have much lower bandwidth in practice than what you expect when you read the box.

So it depends. It is very possible that your WiFi-connectivity is pretty bad. In that case, a cable (with 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet) is going to be much much better. And this could be very noticable. So I don't think it's necessarily a placebo-effect.
 
berryracer said:
it might be true or I am just experiencing the placebo effect

what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Barring a massive bandwidth delta in favor of wireless, wired will always be faster due to the properties of the medium.

Microwave radio is shared spectrum, whereas wired Ethernet has dedicated, full-duplex point-to-point links. In addition, WiFi is subject to interference from other WiFi nodes, as well as non-WiFi microwave transmitters, whereas wired Ethernet has no such transmission concerns.
 
The correct term is WLAN.

WLAN = Wireless LAN. Also called WiFi.
LAN = Local area network. (Cables go up to a few hundred meters. Typically Ethernet).
WAN = Wide are network. (Cables can go hundreds, or thousands of kilometers. Lots of expensive technologies).
 
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